Earth's Crust

1. Earth's Crust Natural Disasters to Remember.

2. Peru Mudslide Mount Huascaran in 1970 let go of a chunk of ice measuring 900m wide and 1500m long during an earthquake. The ice crashed down the mountain gathering rock, dirt and other debris. It started to melt and the water mixed with the dirt creating a mudslide that buried the town of Yungay killing 20,000. The slide reached speeds of 210 km/hr. In all nearly 70,000 people lost their lives.

3. Krakatoa Krakatoa is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. In 1883 an eruption ejected more than 25 cubic kilometres of rock, ash, and pumice[1], and generated the loudest sound ever historically reported.The explosion was distinctly heard as far away as Australia (approx. 3100 km, and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius (approx. 4800km). Shock waves reverberated around the world seven times and were felt for five days. 165 villages and towns were destroyed and 132 seriously damaged, at least 36,417 (official toll) people died, and many thousands were injured by the eruption, mostly in the tsunamis which followed the explosion. Tide gauges also recorded the sea wave's passage far from Krakatau. The wave "reached Aden in 12 hours, a distance of 3800 nautical miles, usually traversed by a good steamer in 12 days". The dust that went into the atmosphere created spectacular suns that appeared green, and blue , spectacular sunsets occurred for years as far away as New York. It changed the climate of the planet for the next year lowering the temperature by 1.2 degrees CelsiusNew eruptions at the volcano since 1927 have built a new island, called Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatoa).

4. Mt.St.Helens An active stratovolcano, is located in southwest Washington State, USA approximately a 3 hour drive from Seattle, WA and a 2 and 1/2 hour drive from Portland. It was 9,677 feet before the eruption and 8,363 feet after. The largest landslide in recorded history swept down the mountain at speeds of 70 to 150 miles per hour and buried the North Fork of the Toutle River under an average of 150 feet of debris.  Some areas are covered by as much as 600 feet.  The lateral blast swept out of the north side of MSH at 300 miles per hour.  Temperatures reached as high as 660 degrees F .The snow melted and created mudflows that destroyed 27 bridges, 200 homes, 185 miles of roadway, and 15 miles of railway .57 people were killed as a result of the eruption , 7,000 big game animals, 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon, and millions of birds and small mammals are believed to have died in the eruption. May 18th, 1980

5. San Francisco Earthquake (1908) The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. The quake ruptured the northernmost 477 kilometers of the San Andreas fault. The earthquake and resulting fire would be remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. About 3000 deaths occurred. Between 225,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 400,000. As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were much more destructive. About 90% of the total destruction.,some initially fueled by natural gas mains broken by the quake. First recording of a quake with motion pictures, lots of scientific evidence gathered for the first time. Seismology emerging as a field.

6. 2004 Tsunami The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. The earthquake triggered a series of lethal tsunamis that spread throughout the Indian Ocean, killing large numbers of people. The magnitude of the earthquake was originally recorded as 9.0 but has been upgraded to between 9.1 and 9.3 Recent analysis indicates the number of casualties were 186,983 dead and 42,883 missing, for a total of 229,866 affected This earthquake was also reported to be the longest duration of faulting ever observed, lasting between 500 and 600 seconds, and it was large enough that it caused the entire planet to vibrate at least half an inch, or over a centimetre

7. Pompeii On August 24, 79 Mount Vesuvius literally blew its top, spewing tons of molten ash, pumice and sulfuric gas miles into the atmosphere. A "firestorm" of poisonous vapors and molten debris engulfed the surrounding area suffocating the inhabitants of the neighboring Roman resort cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. The cities remained buried and undiscovered for almost 1700 years until excavation began in 1748.

8. Chile 1960 May 22 Magnitude 9.5 The Largest Earthquake in the World A piece of the Pacific seafloor (the Nazca Plate) about the size of California slid fifty feet beneath the continent of South America. Like a spring, the lower slopes of the South American continent offshore snapped upwards as much as twenty feet while land along the Chile coast dropped about ten feet.The main tsunami ran through the Pacific Ocean and devastated Hilo, Hawaii, 10,000 kilometers from the epicenter, as well as coastal regions of Japan.The total number of fatalities from the earthquake and tsunami was estimated to 6,000 .

9. Paricutin (The Birth of a Volcanoe) On February 20, 1943 a farmer, Dionisio Pulido, and his wife Paula were burning shrubbery in their cornfield when they observed the earth in front of them swell upward and crack to form a fissure 2-2.5 m across. They heard hissing sounds and later described the rise of "smoke" from the fissure, which had the repugnant smell of rotten eggs. The "rotten egg" smell is a hallmark of H2S gas, and the crack that opened in front of them would, within hours, develop into a small volcano. After roughly one year the volcano had grown 336 meters tall. For the next eight years the volcano would continue erupting. It reached a final height of 424 m.

10. Atlantis? Atlantis has been one of the western world's favorite legends. Most of the information we have about Atlantis comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.The legend:On this huge island was a "great and wonderful empire" where brave, virtuous people lived in a kind of paradise. But this peaceful existence came to an end when the people of Atlantis began to love power more than they loved the gods. They waged war against the rest of the world, but were ultimately defeated by the wise and moral Athenians. Then, some 9,000 years before Plato's own time, or around 9,500 B.C.E., earthquakes sunk Atlantis into the sea. Some have argued that Atlantis was in the Americas, or in the Canary Islands, or in Antarctica. Others think Atlantis was in fact the Greek island of Thera, also known as Santorini—a theory fed by recent archaeological discoveries.

11. Canary Islands (Future) One group of scientists believes that conditions are ideal for a tsunami-producing landslide on the island of La Palma in the Canaries. The western flank of the island's active volcano has the potential to give way in a future eruption. If it did, a huge mass of rock weighing 500,000 million tons would fall into the Atlantic Ocean. Experts in Switzerland have simulated the potential effects of such a collapse. Their model shows that it could generate a wave capable of engulfing every port on the east coast of the U.S and Canada, which they believe may have happened during a similar tsunami 120,000 years ago. Volcanism in the region is largely caused by hotspots in oceanic crust.

12. Canadian Earthquakes

13. Canadian Volcanoes Canada has examples of almost every type of volcano. Although none are erupting now, at least 3 did in the last few hundred years and numerous others have the potential to erupt in the near future.